The National
Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party has asked the Deputy Senate
President, Ike Ekweremadu, to call the bluff of the All Progressives
Congress
senators who asked him to defect to their party in order to retain his seat.
The APC
senators, who are in the majority in the Senate, had asked Ekweremadu to defect
from the PDP to the ruling party if he wants to continue to have their support.
The majority
senators said this after they had seamlessly removed the Senate Majority
Leader, Ali Ndume, and replaced him with Ahmed Lawan.
However, the
PDP asked Ekweremadu, who is the highest political office-holder from the
opposition party, not to be afraid of the APC.
The PDP
assured Ekweremadu that nothing would happen to him.
The
spokesperson for the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led Caretaker Committee of the PDP,
Prince Dayo Adeyeye, said this in a statement in Abuja on Thursday.
Adeyeye said
it was wrong for Senator Kabiru Marafa of the APC to have called on Ekweremadu
on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday to defect from the PDP to the ruling
APC.
Adeyeye said
the call on Ekweremadu was unconstitutional and undemocratic.
He said, “Our
attention has been drawn to a statement credited to Senator Kabiru Marafa on
the floor of the Nigerian Senate on Wednesday, January 11, 2017, in which he
advised Senator Ike Ekweremadu to defect to the APC in order to remain as the
Deputy Senate President.
“This call is
unconstitutional, undemocratic and, to say the least, unbecoming of Senator
Marafa.”
While calling
on him to defect, Marafa had said, “I am using this medium to call on
Ekweremadu to simply defect. Section 68(G) of the 1999 Constitution captures
this.”
But the PDP
faction insisted that, "Senator Marafa or any other member of the APC has
no power to make such demands on a member of the PDP.”
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